Exchange and discussions of ideas and experiences

News

There is little desire among the electorate to see the referendum played out again, according to Matthew Goodwin, a politics professor and Brexit expert from the University of Kent. Goodwin spoke at an event organised by the Migration Policy Centre last week, and afterwards sat down with EUI Times, to discuss what comes next for Britain and the EU, and how we got here in the first place. Read more in EUI Times.

PESCO, the European Union’s new defense cooperation agreement signed earlier this month, represents a big leap towards the creation of a credible, effective European defense policy. Writing for EUI Times, Richard Maher, research fellow at the Global Governance Programme, argues that the deal is further proof that member states are committed to furthering integration post-Brexit.

When the Arab Spring spilled into Syria in 2011, first-year Law researcher Dima Hussain believed that her country's long-entrenched status quo was about to change. Today, however, Syria’s civil war still rages on with no end in sight. Nonetheless, Hussain remains optimistic that one day she will return to Damascus, to a Syria imbued with the idealism that sparked a revolution over six years ago. Read a profile of her in EUI Times.

The EUI has joined Scholars at Risk (SAR), a network of over 400 higher education institutions in 39 countries working to protect threatened scholars, prevent attacks on higher education and promote academic freedom.“By joining SAR, we stand in solidarity with educators, researchers and students around the world who are threatened for peacefully expressing ideas and asking questions,” said Prof. Renaud Dehousse, EUI President.

The eighth edition of the EUI's annual The State of the Union conference will take place on 10-11 May 2018 at the Badia and in Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. The focus of the conference, 'solidarity in Europe', will bring together experts to discuss issues such as European economic, monetary and fiscal policies, social investment, defence and security, migration, climate change, and energy. In recent years, speakers have included Jean-Claude Juncker and Michel Barnier. The conference will be followed by an Open Day at the Historical Archives of the European Union on 12 May.

Publications

The process of European integration has presented intriguing challenges to the core categories with which political theory operates. This volume brings together some of the most important scholarly contributions over the last decades that have sought to contribute towards developing a political theory of the EU as an idiosyncratic political organisation.

This timely volume scrutinises two existential issues for the EU: withdrawal of a member state (i.e. Brexit), and territorial secession (i.e. movements in Catalonia, Scotland and elsewhere). Legal and political science scholars combine specific legal analysis and consider the political dynamics behind the processes. The implications of withdrawal and secession on EU citizenship are discussed in depth and there is an overview of the evolving nature of the relationship between the regions and the EU. Finally, there is an engaging normative discussion on the deeper meaning of these two processes with respect to the objective of European integration.

How do return migrants reintegrate into their countries of origin? Reintegration strategies differ by type of return migrant, driving variation in how they subsequently influence social change in their home countries. This volume focuses particularly on the impact of gender on reintegration strategies, and would be of interest to scholars of migration and refugee studies, sociologists, anthropologists, demographers and policy makers.

This volume, the published version of an EUI doctoral thesis in History, focuses on the network of Genoese colonies in the Black Sea area and their diverse multi-ethnic societies. Interesting for economic historians, medieval history scholars, and social and cultural historians, the book offers a novel interpretation of the functioning of the late medieval colonial multi-ethnic ethnic society of fifteenth-century Caffa, and its interaction with the rest of the world.